Our party skied the Skyland area today, and we're pleasantly surprised to see 6-8" of light fluffy snow in the last 48 hours. Dug an east facing pit at 7,000'. We noticed the 1/13 crust here was intact and was about 12-14" deep. We got ECTP 1 (that's not a typo) on buried surface hoar on top of the crust. I was surprised it fully propagated as the 12-14" above the crust was fist hard at best and not a typical slab. Below the crust, we did not get any more results with hard force and the snowpack below seemed to be gaining strength. We decided to keep things relatively mellow <35° and watch out for sluffing. The third skier in our group set off a decent sluff (estimated D1.5) that ran 3-400' vertical quickly on the crust. No one was caught. The debris pile was not big enough to fully bury you, but it ran with some energy through trees (see photos). This surface hoar layer/bed surface combo is concerning especially with future slab development.
